There's actually very little justification for putting anything about my car on my web page since it's essentially stock. I do have a modest modification wishlist though and when they happen they may (or may not) be show-worthy.
The car as it was when I bought it.
After new suspension and wheels.
So what is it? A 1997 Nissan 200SX (the S14a for those familiar with Nissan model variant designations). Other markets may see this car as the Silvia (Japan) or the 240SX (USA with different engine though). It's a turbocharged 2 litre (the 150kW SR20DET) driving the rear wheels which makes it lots of fun to drive. :-)
And why this car? I've always liked sports cars and motor racing (on a track, of course). Godzilla made me a Nissan fan when Jim Richards and Mark Skaife started blitzing all their Group A rivals with the Skyline GT-R (aka Godzilla) back around 1990. When a petrolhead co-worker bought his V8 Commodore (go visit Dave) his enthusiasm set things in motion. Then the movie The Fast and the Furious made buying something inevitable. Cars like the Skyline GT-R or Impreza WRX (aka Godzilla and Rex) were candidates but the streets are lousy with them now! A Mitsubishi GTO might have been a goer if I hadn't encountered so many problems with Mitsis just prior. :-) I guess what made me seriously think about the 200SX was a nice example of a yellow S15 which was frequenting the car park outside the window where I work.
The awesome Godzilla on its way to a win at Bathurst in 1991.
Only after I bought the car I noticed this 240SX (S14a) on show in TFATF. And yes, that's another Skyline just behind it.
An eye-catching yellow S15.
So now what? I doubt if I'll be going overboard with engine mods what with me being closet petrolhead rather than an actual petrolhead. :-) As you can see above the car is no longer standard though it's only lightly modified still:
So now what? I doubt if I'll be going overboard with engine mods what with me being closet petrolhead rather than an actual petrolhead. :-) As you can see above the car is no longer standard though it's only lightly modified still:
- Whiteline suspension kit. This is a tuned component set comprising sport springs, Koni top-adjustable shocks, front and rear swaybars (27mm and 20mm respectively) plus camber and caster correction.
- 17x8 ROH Fury rims with Toyo Proxies T1-S tyres (225/45R17). These are great tyres!
- Reconditioned rotors and high performance brake pads.
- Edge-style bodykit (skirt kit only)
The suspension and tyre upgrade make for a spectacular improvement in the handling of the car and it's surprisingly difficult to induce understeer or oversteer now (which is all too easy with the standard setup). The car sits 30mm lower at the front and 25mm lower at the rear giving it a more natural appearance. i.e. the car doesn't look low until you see how "lifted" it used to look.
The car still needs a respiratory upgrade though so air filter and exhaust are obvious shopping list candidates. I'm deferring this until our transport safety authority can decide what a legal exhaust is (instead of the arbitrary and subjective nonsense they've "specified").
Curiously this car has no factory illumination in the footwells or on the doors. The footwell illumination shown above were inspired by something I saw in an S15. The blue comes from the usual neon tubes while the red comes banks of ultra-bright LEDs. The colours are controlled independently with a custom computer (see below) so they come on at a useful time. Normally I have the blue come on while the door is open and red when switching off the ignition. Of course the colours mix to give purple if they're on together.
I haven't managed to get good even illumination which is why the picture is a bit crap.
This is the previous version of an embedded computer designed which presently only controls the turbo timer and the interior lights. The current one does the same thing but has a better mechanical design (connectors and mounting). Hopefully I'll get around to logging various ECU parameters to track performance.
When I bought the car the previous owner had fitted a cheap and nasty off-the-shelf turbo timer which was triggered by the dropping of the ignition line itself. This means power was momentarily cut to the engine (which nearly stalled it) which was way too brutal for my liking. A smart turbo timer can sense recent engine activity can figure out how long to leave the engine running (if at all) after key removal and engage the bypass before the ignition line goes down. My current implementation isn't quite that smart yet (because it hasn't got its hooks into the ECU yet) but it's armed by applying the handbrake. This has the bonus that I don't have to disable to turbo timer to do an immediate engine shutdown (just switch off the ignition before applying the handbrake) and you can't drive the car away without disarming the turbo timer first.
Shiney suspension components with, um, not-so-shiney.
With Edge-style skirt kit.
I kind of like these pictures for some reason. Typical New Zealand farm land (in the Wairarapa) although the car is not at home here at all! Click for a larger version.
